Mother Plant

Mother plants - Rest & Boost Technique

I have been asked to write a blog on my experiences within the ‘indoor gardening’ world. For the purpose of these blogs, my name is Star Dawg. I hope these blogs will offer help and advice to beginners and or experienced growers

Once you have found a strain that you like and is suited to your growing style, it’s a good idea to keep a mother plant giving you an endless supply of cuttings from your favourite strain. Over the years I have kept hundreds of mother plants, all of which need to be kept healthy in order to give you healthy cuttings

A mother plant is kept in the vegetative stage on a light cycle of either 18 or 24 hours of light

Pot size I like to use 20L pots to keep mother plants in to avoid the plant from getting pot bound. You don’t want the roots having any kind of restrictions

Pot mix in a 20L pot. I use 4L of washed Hydrostones in the bottom. This is to help drainage, then I fill the pot with 60/40, leaving an inch of space at the top. I like to top the pot off with washed Hydrostones. This is to stop the light from hitting the 60/40 and causing unwanted heat.

Depending on how many cuttings you need to take from a mother plant will determine the feeding schedule and how you feed it. Someone who needs to take cuttings every 2 weeks will need a different approach than someone who needs to take cuttings every 2 months. I’m going to share with you a technique called ‘Rest’ and ‘Boost’. This is a brilliant method for people who don’t need to take cuttings that often.

Rest when a mother plant is in Rest the idea is just to keep her alive until you need to take cuttings from her.

To achieve this you will need

• 200w blue CFL
• Reflector (I use Adjust a Wing Defenders for the mother room)
• Feed (I use Bloom nutrients) Euro A+B 1mm perL seaweed 1mm perL and sea mineral 0.15 perL 

These are the only products I use to feed in rest

You don’t want to overfeed a mother plant in Rest, as you just want to keep her alive. Smaller plants will need less feeding than a large mother plant, so it’s a little bit of trial and error. My mother plants are fed by hand. Every plant gets 2L of feed every Monday and then are left to dry out. If any of the plants are dry on Thursday they get another 1L. Different strains feed at different rated so it depends what strains your growing

Boost 2 weeks before I need to take cuttings, I put the selected mother plant in to Boost. The idea is to force her to produce lots of new shoots, which I take as cuttings. To achieve this, you will need

• 600w MH lamp (superveg)
• Digital dimmable ballast
• Reflector (we use the Adjust a Wing Defender swapping the CFL for the MH)
• Feed ( I use bloom nutrients A+B 2mm perL , seaweed 1mm perL, cal mag 1mm perL, seamin 0.15 perL, silica 0.4mm perL and groigan foliar feed every 5 days as per bottle

 Turn the ballast down to 250w for the first 2 days and keep it 300mm from the top of the mother plant. I now feed the plant 1L of feed every day. After2 days turn the ballast to 400w and feed 1.5L per day. After 2days turn the ballast to 600w. I now feed the mother plant 2L of feed per day. The plant  will start to grow new fresh looking shoots all over the crown of the plant. If you have any large fan leaves blocking the light, take them off to allow the light to penetrate the plant.

After 10 days of being under 600w you should have plenty of new shoots to take as cuttings. Once you have taken all the cuttings, you then return the plant, back in to Rest.

After about 9 months I replace my mother plants with a cutting from herself. This is because Coco tends to lock out nitrogen after that period of time. Simply repot the old mother into a 50L pot and flower her off.